The Master Gardner of My Soul  (rough draft)

Gardening in the sunshine this morning--
The birds sing, the sun shines down through dappled shade,
the hose lays at my feet--water gurgling musically over the patchy lawn.

Distracted.  I glance up at the roses which have run wild.
With clippers in hand, I cut off the limbs at random that reach towards heaven, spindly.
I trim them down so that the blooms may grow
ever bigger to fragrance the warm afternoon wind.

I place more pots of greenhouse flowers
yet to be planted around--in the garden, by the flower gardens.

What does my husband think--of all these pots of vegetables, flowers, and fruit?
Maybe his wife his gone mad?
It is a beautiful madness, still.
Our garden, front yard, and back yard are shaping up.
Finally, tended and forced from their wild states to ones of more structure and rigid routine.

Raking, hoeing, hacking out the weeds and volunteer brambles, things less desirable in our garden.

I reach over and pull an errant weed from the dry caked soil, looking at the once living, green thing before throwing it to the ground and grabbing more weeds.

Reaching, grabbing, grasping weeds and ripping them loose...Ahh.
Bending, sweating, exhausted--
A ray of light pierces my cloudy thoughts and I begin to cry,
as a drop of rain begins to fall watering my dark, dry, dormant thoughts.
Why all the gardening and the tending, the planting and mending?

Why?  Why the fixation with taming, trimming, tending, watering--
even after sunset and into the darkness.
Why the need, the urgency to prepare, to plant, to beautify?

The answers come like sprinkler water to dry soil,
To hide the dirt, 
the darkness, 
the pain of loss.
My own loss.

The ugliness, the shock, the pain, as a tiny baby once again slips free of the fertile grasp
it once had in me and lets go
and is gone into the water and is washed away.

Sweet Baby.  Why did you have to go away?
Just in the Springtime...on Easter Sunday.

I bought herbs and lavender instead of Easter Lilies this year.
(Excited to plant something to live and grow, thrive and survive--
not like our cut Easter Lilies that bloom and fade and eventually die.)
Transplanted, the herbs made it safely to the soil.
Now, they thrive but the lavender did not.

Why do some plants and children thrive and grow--unbeknownst to themselves the wonderful,
 nurtured lives they lead?
Others, who bloom with such great promise, like the Lavender, fade away and are gone
or as the petunias, under the carefree grasp of a young toddler, are plucked up, smelled, thrown down,
forgotten, and shrivel up.

Is there one in charge of this vibrant patch of eternal ground,
this bit of earth,
this bit of clay, the living, growing human inside of me?

Who is in charge here--where souls, like plants and weeds, are saved or disregarded?  The living souls, no longer bright, the remains a brittle shell of it's once glorious being.

Who can know these things?  The Master Gardner, of course.
It is He that I seek.
He, to whom, all is known.

He clothed the lilies of the fields
in their splendid skirts of scarlet,
He feeds the birds of the sky
even noting when one sparrow falls.

Does he, like rose limbs, cut me back--errant limbs reaching for the sky but producing no blooms?
Must he, like me, rake the hard earth, hacking it up, mixing soil and clay,
Toiling to make me a more fertile place where once more a tender, small, soul may be planted?

Can He see the barren soil of bitterness left in my heart,
and doubt amidst the patches of green hope and bright flowers of faith?
Is He trimming back my thorny, limbs?
Finding the wick under the fragile, dry soil facade.

Will the pain, the stretching, the bending, the breaking, reveal a new life?
Uncover a new, undiscovered, strong soil--like rich brown earth tilled up under the cracked,
hard dirt of the painful experiences of my past?

Will He water me with water of everlasting life,
instead of my poor excuse for moisture--the salty tears I have shed?

Does he have a master plan, for me, in His eternal garden?

I know He does.